Who Do I Call

It’s been such a busy summer. Here it is, Labor Day weekend, and we haven’t had a single dinner on our lovely deck. We normally reserve the bulk of our meager “entertaining” for summer weekends, placing a couple of tables along the side of the long deck and having what I perceive as Italian style dinners “al fresco”, surrounded by the trees and sometimes dodging the acorns that fall from the trees like bullets. It is Saturday morning and I am contemplating who to call. Who will be available at the last minute? Of the groups of people I think make great dinner combos, which ones do I call first? Which one of each group is pivotal? And which group? Which of my friends won’t look at the hodgepodge my house has become and not shake their heads in disbelief at the chaos? Our son moved back in for the final year of his master’s degree so he could take a hospital post nearby and also so he could afford to eat. With him came all the furniture he accumulated: not much; a desk, a chair, a futon. Consequently, we moved the couch in my office to the living room, put the futon in the office, moved the nightstand in his room to the other side of the bed to make room for the desk and squeezed the chair in between the desk and the bed. He is now able to sit at his desk and stretch his legs out on the bed while studying. The bed also makes a great shelf. As for the living room… well, my husband sat down on one of the two sofas, three armchairs, three dressers, three footstools and a coffee table to have a cup of coffee and I said, “The Doctor will be with you in a moment.” It looks that much like a waiting room. It reminds me of an old story: A woman goes to the Rabbi and says, “Oy, Rabbi, I don’t know what to do! My house is so small and crowded, it’s making me crazy!” He tells her to go to the barn and get all the chickens and put them in the kitchen. They get the goat and the cow and the horse put them in the living room. Then put the rabbit cages in the bedroom. So she does. A week later she returns screaming. “Rabbi, what did you do to me? I have no room even to move!” So he tells her to take the chickens back to the bar, the goat the cow and the horse back to the pasture and the rabbits back outside. She returns a week late and says, “Rabbi, you’re a genius! I have so much room!” So my son says we should have a party because there are so many places for people to sit and talk. I say yes, but is there any place for them to walk? Is the glass half empty or half full? I have never been able to answer that. Meanwhile, who do I call?